Changing Focus on Immigration

My wife and I enjoyed a wonderful tour of the Reichstag, courtesy of Beate Hasenjager, who is in charge of all the facilities at the government complex including procurement, and the first woman to ever hold this position.  She gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the main chamber where the elected officials meet, a number of the meeting and assembly rooms, and the incredible glass dome that sits atop the building and which is both beautiful and functional, providing light and helping with temperature control.

Germany is a parliamentary democracy.  There is a president but he is mostly a figurehead when it comes to enacting laws. The chancellor (currently Angela Merkel) is elected by an absolute majority of the Bundestag (the lower house) for a four-year term and is the head of government. The Bundesrat (the upper house), has 69 seats, with each state having three to six representatives depending on the state's population. The Bundestag has 598 deputies who are elected for four years using a mixed system of proportional representation and direct voting; additional seats are added when a party wins more seats through direct voting than it would have by proportional representation alone.  A party must win at least 5% of the vote in order to be represented.  Furthermore, Germany is divided into 16 states, each with its own constitution, legislature, and government, which can pass laws on all matters except those - such as defense, foreign affairs, and finance - that are the exclusive right of the federal government.

Over lunch Beate and I discussed health policy and a broader conversation about immigrants.  I described to her how the U.S. has tried to legislate immigration and the current movement towards E-Verify.  Beate stated that in Germany it is not possible to find work if you are in the country illegally.

That, of course, is how many people in America would have it.  But what seems to be lost is the fact that immigration is never, at its essence, about law: it is a political decision, the kind that allowed my parents to legally emigrate and 12 million others not.  Immigration law is not the Ten Commandments. It is not composed of immutable truths like "Thou Shalt Not Kill."  But unfortunately this conflation of law and political policy can bind us from taking actions that are good for the country.

In a recent New York Times article, for example, Philippe Legrain, a former economic adviser to the president of the European Commission, argues convincingly that immigrants are the "tonic" the EU needs to reverse Europe’s demographic decline and resultant economic stagnation.  He also refers to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing that migrants tend to be net contributors to public finances.  Here in the U.S. there is an abundance of similar data (for example, I previously referred to data collected by the St. Louis Mosaic Project).

We can debate over just how immigrant labor fits into the overall economic picture of our country and what are the proper mechanisms (increased numbers of visas, expanded ability to seek asylum, etc.) to manage the flow of immigrants, but we can never get to that point - and fully realize the tremendous benefits of immigration - if the issue is always seen through the prism of law.  Let's insist on changing the focus to a policy discussion and have a more productive conversation about immigration.